New Books

Help

April 2007

This may fall under the category of shooting fish in a barrel, as there is no list like this that is not immediately vulnerable to criticism, but this list of Mario's fave tunes has some surprises, in having few surprises.The list has the feel of being put together by Mario's people, rather than by any individual. When I was wooing the cinetrix, there was once a grad seminar that met at one of my classmates' houses. He happened to be dating someone I had dated previously, so I gave his crib more scrutiny than otherwise. My grad student self was impressed by his ownership of curtains, an undreamed of refinement for me, but dismayed by his cd collection, which I described in a letter to the cinetrix all the hallmarks of having been assembled by a a team of FBI agents charged with creating a plausible CD collection for someone in the Witness Protection Program, part whose cover was that he liked "indie rock." Mario's list is kind of like that in its predictability.

Like the 5th Beatle, the 4th Beastie, or the 3rd man in, Philly steps up as the newest member of the Axis of Eatin'. Cheesesteak, the celebrated Philly staple, is available with extra echt, as Bruni details:

I'd originally planned simply to condemn the drollery of the Degustation version as hurtling across the Spinal Tap frontier between clever and stupid, but what would be the point? The distance between these two sandwiches brought to mind a line from England, England, which has been a part of my day job recently. As the minions of a Murdochesque tycoon discuss producing a hyperreal version of England on the isle of Jersey, one of the consultants wonders, "Is not the very notion of the the authentic, somehow, in its own way, bogus?" He may have a point, when it comes to things like cheesesteak. If you have read this far, you probably avoid the Olive Garden and its ilk, but if the pursuit of the authentic, (a common small-c chowhound preoccupation), becomes an end in itself, it can come at the expense of good eating. I've had crappy BBQ at places that looked promising in terms of their remote location and decor; the Cubanos I get at the Montrose are better than the one I had at Versailles, despite the lack of Bay of Pigs Monday morning QBs in the 02138. I am not advocating a flight to the food court, but rather raising the possibility that there might be such a thing as too much authenticity.

The final member of the Axis of Eatin' appears in a cosmopolitan,* rather than a nationalist context. As we see from the sushi police, the falafel war, and even Gopnik's casual dismissal of Italian cuisine, food gets the blood up like nothing except maybe for futbol. And yet very few people eat with this kind of single-mindedness. There may be a Frenchy somewhere who subsists on Calvados and brie, but most of us partake of a variety of cuisines in the course of a week. Especially in big cities, these cuisines tend to cover a significant global range. Certainly for New York, and London to a lesser degree, the richness of the culinary landscape is a function of the diversity of cuisines available to the diner. However, generally speaking, conceptions of cuisine, especially as expressed in cookbooks, unfold along nationalist lines. Even the Wells and Clotilde cookbooks written up in last Sunday's Times acknowledge the tradition of French cuisine by revising it.

In contrast, the Ethnic Paris Cookbook reflects the Paris of everyday life.** With chapters on North Africa, Vietnnam, Japan, Africa, and Lebanon, the book reflects the cuisine of France's colonial past (except maybe Japan). At the risk of sounding like a total asshat, it is, perhaps the first post-colonial cookbook I've come across. Like the man in the white above, many of the things that make Paris Paris are not French.*** The design is a bit Putamayo for my taste, but the ideas are interesting. Presenting a handful of receipts from each of these culinary traditions creates an Epcot effect, but even setting aside the conceit of Ethnic Paris, there is something to be said for a cookbook with a few solid receipts from a variety of cuisines, rather than a shelf full of comprehensive ethnic tomes full of receipts you will never, ever, cook.

The dish that inspired me to start cooking out of this book was the Orange and Cumin Salad. The cinetrix and I enjoyed a similar salad at Cafe Gitane last summer, and had been meaning to work on reproducing it at home. Basically you toss orange segments with sliced onion, black olives and harissa, and serve on lettuce. Their harissa receipt I did not like as much as Didi's, but the next batch will be a synthesis of the two. It was a refreshing side on a warm evening, and would be a delicious counterpoint to grilled meats. If you know any young cooks who are graduating, and want to spread their wings beyond the New Basics, this would be a good place to start.

We return to our discussion of culinary nationalism with a look at strange things afoot in Japan. I started to post about this back when it happened but it is, perhaps newly relevant in this context. The sushi police are coming:

Conservatively
speaking, this is seven kinds of wrong. Most of all, the relation
between the state and its culture that this posits is concerning, in that it suggest the government determines what are genuine exponents of a culture. It
would be as if Oprah assumed federal powers, and could give a "Great American Novel" imprimatur the force of law. Even if one assumes that the government of Japan, or any other national government, has the right to define official expressions of its culture, this question of "authenticity" remains wicked problematic. Obviously, the Aramark sushi I've been known to have for lunch in case of emergency might usefully be called "inauthentic," but any regional cuisine that has a global reach must a) adapt or b) wear out a lot of can openers. For instance, a chef could do any
number of stages in France, then open a restaurant in California that would make the angels and Paula Wolfert weep, but without access to the fish species of the Mediterranean, there could be no "authentic" bouillabaisse in California. And so what? Considering that the French famously cannot agree on the definitive bouillabaisse from one village to the next, and have been known to fight duels over the constituents of a cassoulet, the notion of an officially authentic foodstuff seems foolish -- I would imagine that the sashimi in Kyoto is different from the sashimi in Tokyo, so which guy gets to decide if Masa, or the stuff in your supermarket's deli case, gets the seal? It seems as if taste and the market works pretty well to make these distinctions.

Becks and Posh's St. George's day megapost dedicated to the proposition that English food is no joke is as good a time as any to tie up some loose ends involving food and nationalism that have been rattling around.England:
"English food is no joke" is one of those assertions that by virtue of being uttered inevitably suggests that the opposite is true, like statements about the athleticism of stock car racers,* or Nicole Kidman's prowess as an actress. However, B&P lays out a pretty strong case. Beyond the points like the inadvisability of stepping to Fergus Henderson, there are celebrations of individual foodstuffs, and more global reflections, like the one that points out that Keith Richards eats it. To sum up: bangers & mash & heroin = eternal life.**

*Not sure how long this has been around, but NNDB, the source for the Cale Yarborough image, is a little bit creepy, in its inclusion of a datafield for sexual orientation.

** Searching for images of Keith Richards is less NSFW than searching for images of Nicole Kidman, but in a way, the abundance of fan art devoted to making Keef look even more haggard than he is is more disturbing than a thousand blurry Blue Room pics.

Update: The American Companion is out -- anecdotally available for some time at bookstores, and released March 9th, according to Amazon. The whole thing seems to be swimming in imprecision.

Those dons at OUP are adding an American companion to the Oxford Companions to food and wine. This expansion of the franchise is a logical extension of the Oxford Companion brand, but if I ran the zoo, I might focus on making sure the extant companions had their ducks in a row. As detailed here recently, the entry for guanciale is plain wrong in the original 1999 edition, and the 2002 Penguin edition, and reader Aeneas chimed in later to report that the 2006 revised edition repeats the error. In the grand scheme of things, it's hard to imagine "you don't know your belly from your jowls" becoming the new expression of ignorance, but other readers, notably Max wrote in to suggest that Davidson's original opus is an impressive individual accomplishment, but not a reliable reference. I have zero experience running giant popular/academic presses that have been printing books for centuries, but I'd suggest that a reputation for accuracy is pretty important for the reference wing of the business, and that privileging fact checking over aquisitions for a while might be a good idea. Of course, in a world where a major New York daily misspells "wikipedia" in a lede, perhaps precision in reference works is a forlorn hope.

Despite my fond hopes, I remained unable to come up with a dish that would erase last Monday from the calendar. All I could think of to do was to offer a home-cooked meal for the two Virginia Tech alums who are grad students in my department. One of them took me up on the offer, and brought a friend. It was a warm spring Friday, which always seems like a good time for pesto, and lots of Domaine de Cassagnoles. To start, I made this variant of the cold roasted cantaloupe soup I like to make, but in recognition of our guest, I added a garnish of pickled beets:

A small thing, but I did manage to put a smile on the face of a Va. Tech alum, which made me feel slightly less helpless for a moment.

The world is a special place. Never more so than when two young people conspire to extort a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer from their relatives pledge to spend the rest of their lives together. One of the special things people like to do on those special days is have special meals to share with their special friends.* In the service of specialness, some even allow their guests to choose from a selection of possible entrees. Too often, however, one runs into the problem of special guests who are illiterate, and unable to indicate their choice. I am happy to say that this is one problem that now belongs to the past. Thanks to Paper Source, one can adorn the invitation for your special day with food shapes, let your guests circle their choices and eliminate the need to read entirely! Bravo, Paper Source!

*My father was shocked to learn that the cinetrix and I intended to feed people at our reception, insisting that champagne and tiny bowls of peanuts were the thing. In retrospect, that would have been cooler.

Paula Deen's hogs come home to roost. Unions, angered by the mayo maven's association with noted corporate malfesor Smithfield, Inc. have vowed to picket all of her public appearances until she severs ties with Smithfield. I alluded to the challenges of getting into bed with Smithfield, and not smelling like hog manure earlier this week, but it is good to see this story getting some attention in the NYT. Ironically, Deen may be the best thing that ever happened to the Smithfield union movement. Over the last year or so, the NYT has covered this story, but not energetically. The protests gives the story faces and names, and produces a story that will practically write itself whenever and wherever Deen appears. Tar Heel, NC is NASCAR country. It will be interesting to see if social justice can draft off of the popularity of the Food Network in the weeks to come.